


What He Left Behind

by Fandom_Stuff



Series: A Collection of Ficlets [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Denial, Grief, M/M, Sadness, Sorrow, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26651383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fandom_Stuff/pseuds/Fandom_Stuff
Summary: Castiel is taken by the empty, Dean struggles to handle his loss.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester/Castiel, Destiel
Series: A Collection of Ficlets [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888318
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	What He Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the pain you're about to read, but enjoy it anyway.

Dean was numb all over. His thoughts were blank, yet rampant at the same time. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real, this was just a dream, a nightmare. 

His head rested against the back of the wall, eyes pooling with tears, and he let his hands run through his hair as his knees came up to his chest. 

He had to wake up. 

This was just a nightmare. 

_ He had to wake up _ . 

Tears dislodged from his eyes as he covered his face with his hands and squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the moment when he’d wake up in his bed and Cas would be waiting in the kitchen, coffee already brewing. 

But the longer he sat there, against that wall, with tears falling uncontrollably from his eyes, the more he began to realize this wasn’t a dream. 

“Dean!” 

Sam’s worried shout echoed through the bunker but Dean didn’t respond to him; it sounded like he was underwater, everything was distorted and far away, garbled by gallons of liquid. 

“Dean!” 

Sam’s voice was closer now, but Dean still didn’t have the energy to reply. He was frozen, sitting there, head against the wall, cheeks wet with tears, eyes staring at the spot where Cas had been merely minutes ago. 

There was nothing there now. 

The room was empty.

_ Empty _ . 

Anger suddenly flooded through him, mixing with his shock and devastation. The empty had taken Cas, he was gone, and Dean had been assured by the cosmic being that Cas wasn’t going to be coming back again. 

More tears filled Dean’s eyes as he remembered the look Cas had fixed him with. There had been such sorrow, such want, in those blue eyes; and now, in the emptiness of that room, with only the hum of the lights above him to quell the silence, Dean wished that they’d had more time. He wished that he hadn’t wasted all those years, thinking that Cas couldn’t possibly love him back, that an  _ angel  _ couldn’t possibly love such a broken man as himself. 

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Castiel  _ had  _ loved him. This whole time, they could’ve been together, but now… now Cas was gone. 

“Dean!” Sam gasped as he burst into the room, causing Dean to flinch and fix his brother with a watery stare. Sam faltered slightly, relief crossing over his face only to be replaced by concern. “Dean, what happened?” Sam glanced at the empty room and his next words dug a deeper pit in Dean’s stomach. “Where’s Cas?” 

“He’s gone, Sammy,” he choked out. 

“Gone? What… you don’t mean… did the empty…?”

“He’s gone,” Dean repeated. 

“No,” Sam whispered softly as his hand came up to grasp at the door frame. “Dean… I’m so-” 

“Don’t, Sam. Just don’t, please.” Dean knew what Sam was trying to say, he knew that Sam had never had the same kind of friendship - _ bond _ \- with Cas that Dean had, he wouldn’t feel Cas’ loss as harshly as Dean. They were friends of course, but with Dean and Cas it had gone deeper, it had been in his soul, his soul that Cas never failed to mention was the brightest and most beautiful he’d ever seen.

Sam nodded stiffly, attempting to keep his own tears at bay. “I’ll… I’ll leave you to um…” Sam backed away, almost backing into the door, but managing to avoid it by a hair length. 

With Sam gone, footsteps retreating down the hallway, Dean collapsed, his whole body shaking, sobs contorting his chest in racking, breathless, cries. 

“Cas, hear me, please,” he prayed. “I can’t do this without you, I need you.” He paused for a moment, his next words had been the last thing he’d said to Cas, and they were all the more painful for it. “I love you.” 

He knew Cas couldn’t hear him, wherever he was, but words Cas had said to Dean long ago came floating back to him. 

_ I always come when you call _ . 

But this time, he didn’t. 

Silence greeted his prayer. 

Where there once might have been the flutter of wings, or the rumble of a car engine as Cas arrived twenty minutes after Dean prayed, there was nothing. 

The silence was deafening. 

There was a ringing in his ears that seemed to grow louder and louder the longer he lay on the floor, the longer he fought to control his gasping breaths. 

He didn’t know how long he lay there, it could have been hours, or days, or years, but eventually, he managed to sit up and uncurl his stiff limbs. It took him another few minutes to stand up, and when he did his head rushed wildly with vertigo, causing the world to black out for a moment. In that moment, Dean wondered what it would be like to succumb to the darkness completely, to just fall to the ground and hope his head split open on the tiled floor; death would be welcomed, after everything he’d been through he deserved some peace. 

But when the vertigo faded and his sight returned, he knew he couldn’t do that to Sam. But it would be so easy, so easy to take a gun to his mouth and squeeze the trigger, so easy to flip the lights out and let the world's problems be figured out by someone else. 

He felt the cold metal of his gun warming against the skin of his back and his hand twitched towards it, only to falter. He shouldn’t. But it was so tempting. 

He shook his head and made his way over to the sink in the bedroom. The attached mirror revealed his ragged reflection and Dean hardly recognized the man staring back at him. His eyes were red, puffy, and bloodshot, glassed over with a bleary sheen. Dark circles were forming under his eyes, and his hair was twisted in many different angles. His heart lurched as he was reminded of Cas’ hair, unruly, never tamed, dark, thick, and wild. 

More tears stung his dry eyes, and he gripped the side of the sink as another small sob escaped from his mouth. His head hung between his shoulders, grief taking ahold of him with cold, steel-like, hands. 

He’d lost Cas before, the grief was nothing new, but he’d always came back. This time, Dean knew no matter what he did, Cas would never walk through the bunker doors again, never place a cup of coffee in front of Dean in the morning, or hand him a beer after a hunt. He’d never see those blue eyes again, he’d never see the confused tilt to his head or the squint he always did when he didn’t understand something. He’d never hear his voice, low and soft in his ear as he was greeted with a warm smile and a ‘hello, Dean’. He’d never feel the warm palm of Cas’ hand on his shoulder, as he reassured him that everything was alright. 

At that thought, he remembered that just before Cas had disappeared, he’d given Dean’s shoulder one last squeeze. He could practically feel the lingering ghost of Castiel’s touch, and his eyes lifted to the mirror, to his shoulder, where the dark red shape of a bloodied handprint lay branded into his jacket. 

Dean stared at it for a moment before he slowly raised his own hand and pressed it against the mark. His shoulders shook in another sob as he felt the dried blood catch on his skin. He stumbled away from the mirror, and the back of his knees hit the bed. He crumpled onto the mattress, hand still pressed to his shoulder, eyes still dripping with tears like a leaky faucet. 

_ Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.  _

He chanted to himself as he rocked forward and backward on the bed. 

_ Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.  _

_ It’s not a dream, Dean.  _ His mind helpfully supplied.  _ It’s real _ . 

It’s real. 

It  _ can’t  _ be real. 

Dean won’t let it be real.

There has to be a way to get him back. 

_ There has to be _ . 

Dean suddenly spurred into action, his feet carrying him towards the bunker’s library. His hands reached for books and he tore them off the shelves, flipping through pages and pages of lore, eyes burning as he read word after word, looking for anything the Men of Letters might have on the empty. 

For days, Dean didn’t leave the library. He’d fall asleep on top of an open book and wake a few hours later only to continue reading where he left off. Sam came and went, bringing him food and water, but Dean barely touched any of it. 

When it was nearing a week, Sam finally sat down across from Dean and pulled the book he was reading away from him. 

“Sam!” Dean growled in protest. “Give it back!” 

“No,” Sam retorted. “Dean, you have to give it a rest. I miss him too, but he’s gone. The empty took him,  _ he’s gone _ . You’ll burn yourself into the ground if you keep going like this.” 

“No, Sam, he came back before, he can do it again. There has to be a way, there has to be  _ something _ .”

“There isn’t. You know there isn’t, we’ve looked before.” 

“We must have missed something,” Dean hissed as he tried to grab the book from Sam, but Sam held it out of his reach. 

“Cas wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself, Dean.”

“Don’t play that card, Sam,” Dean spat. 

“Dean, please,” Sam begged. 

The look on Sam’s face made Dean falter. His lungs suddenly pushed out all their air, and he slumped in his chair, defeated. Sam was right. There was no bringing Cas back, there was no lore, no spell, no deal he could make; nothing. 

“Okay, Sammy. Okay.” 

“You’ll stop?” 

Dean nodded slowly, air filling his lungs again. “I’ll stop.” 

“Good. Now go get some sleep.” 

Dean stood warily, his legs wobbling under him from lack of use. He made his way down the hall, passing the kitchen that suddenly seemed so eerie, so  _ haunting _ . 

Cas was everywhere.

The kitchen table where they used to have breakfast was vacant, the chair Cas usually sat in was twisted away from the table in the position that Cas had left it when he stood up. 

Dean blinked a few times, staving off tears, then made his way to his room in a daze, and settled down under the covers, not even bothering to change out of the week old clothes he was still in. He never wanted to take this jacket off, never wanted to wash away the handprint, never wanted to forget the feeling of Cas’ hand on his shoulder.

The footsteps Dean was so used to falling asleep to as Cas bustled around the bunker at ungodly hours of the night were absent, nothing but silence now. Despite the exhaustion tugging at his body he still tossed and turned, still shut his eyes only to reopen them moments later. 

It was too quiet. 

Dean couldn’t stand it, but somehow he managed to fall asleep, but his sleep was not peaceful. 

Memories washed over him in waves of dreams.

He was in the barn, lightbulbs burst from the ceiling, sending sparks flying everywhere. Shotgun shots blasted through the air and Castiel walked through them like it was nothing. 

_ I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.  _

_ Yeah, thanks for that.  _

The sound of his knife hitting home in Castiel’s chest rang in his ears and Cas pulled it from his body like he’d just been poked with a toothpick. 

_ Why would an angel, rescue me from hell?  _

_ Good things do happen, Dean. _

_ Not in my experience.  _

_ What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved. _

His dream shifted, he felt pain radiate up his body as he was slammed into an alley wall.

_ I rebelled for this! So that you could surrender to them! _

_ Cas, please. _

_ I gave everything for you! And this is what you give to me!? _

Hit after hit he took, blood pooled from his mouth, cuts deepened on his cheeks with every punch Castiel threw his way. 

He deserved this. 

_ I rebelled. I did it, all of it, for you. _

Now, he was in Purgatory, Castiel’s hand slipping from his as he tried to pull the angel through the portal.

_ I got you, hold on! _

_ Dean! GO! _

The feeling of Cas’ hand slipping through his felt like he’d been singed with fire, it burned and blistered on his skin. Devastation tore into his body as he watched Cas’ face disappear against the backdrop of Purgatory. 

Lastly, he was standing in that bedroom, Cas before him, knuckles bloody from fighting, palm dripping from where he’d cut it to activate a sigil, a sigil that was supposed to save them, not doom them. 

_ You fought for this whole world.  _

Dean stared at him, speechless, and then he surged forward, pressing his lips to the angels. Cas gasped, but didn’t pull away, he only deepened the kiss, both trying to make up for lost time. The banging on the door was getting louder and more insistent but Dean didn’t break the kiss, not until he heard the burst door open behind him and saw the empty crash through. Cas reached for him, his hand on his shoulder, spilling blood onto his jacket. 

_ I love you, Dean.  _

The empty laughed behind them, and then suddenly it was behind Cas, black liquid flying towards him, enveloping him in tendrils of darkness. 

_ I love you too, Cas _ . He gasped out.

Cas’ blue eyes softened, shining with tears, but he still smiled. 

Dean tried to grab for him, but an invisible force flung him across the room where he hit the wall and slumped to the ground. 

Cas’ eyes were the last thing he saw before the empty disappeared, taking Cas with it.

Dean woke with a gasp, tears in his eyes. 

He pushed the blankets off himself and his eyes fell on the chair Cas sometimes sat in. It looked so sad now, vacant and small. 

Dean knew that he was never going to stop seeing Cas in everything he’d left behind, he was never going to be able to forget what the bunker had been like when it had an angel living in it. 

Now, the bunker would never be anything, but empty.


End file.
